


Little Deaths

by 57circlesofhell



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, First Kiss, Johnlock - Freeform, M/M, Married Mary Morstan/John Watson, POV Third Person Limited, Past Tense, Post-His Last Vow, Scars, post-series 3
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-16
Updated: 2015-11-14
Packaged: 2018-03-23 06:51:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3758560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/57circlesofhell/pseuds/57circlesofhell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I know what you didn’t say on the tarmac." John had been holding those words in a pit below his stomach for a month, but Mary was making it impossible for him to release them. Every time Sherlock texted him and pulled him back into Baker Street’s orbit, Mary found a way to be there, as if she knew what Sherlock meant to say on the tarmac, too. Perhaps she did.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to Tumblr users just-sort-of-happened and iamjohnlocked4life for beta reading this fic!

_I know what you didn’t say on the tarmac._ John had been holding those words in a pit below his stomach for a month, but Mary was making it impossible for him to release them. Every time Sherlock texted him and pulled him back into Baker Street’s orbit, Mary found a way to be there, as if she knew what Sherlock meant to say on the tarmac, too. Perhaps she did.

John started to get desperate. He thought of lobbing the words at Sherlock in a text or an email and clearing his outbox so Mary would never see them, but he knew he’d get no response that way. The pressure of imminent death wasn’t on Sherlock’s back anymore, and he’d keep wasting time if he knew he had it. But as far as John was concerned, there was no time left. His wife was growing impatient with their separate sleeping arrangements, his unborn child was nipping at his heels, and he needed to know what he and Sherlock could have been before the next phase of domesticity pulled him under.

And so John found himself hesitating on the wet pavement of Baker Street without a single excuse for being there. There was no text, no case, no invitation, no watchful Mary, just a certain heaviness in the air that told him this was the day he had to know. He gave the keys in his hand a squeeze before letting himself in as if he didn’t have another home to go to. When he got up the stairs, he saw that the door to the flat was open and Sherlock was sitting idly on his chair in his blue robe, eyes closed and hands steepled against his lips.  

“John,” Sherlock said in answer to John’s footfalls, remaining completely still aside from a lifting of his eyebrows. “Didn’t expect you, but I’m glad you’re here. Is Mary with you?”

 John stayed standing near the door. “Ah, no. She’s…”

“Good.” Sherlock jumped out of his chair, walked over to the cluttered desk , and sat with his back to John. “I’ve just got something I may need your help with.”

John came to stand behind Sherlock, his hands clasped behind him. “What, you have a case on? Didn’t think to phone me?”

“Of course I thought to phone you, but this concerns Moriarty and I’d rather Mary weren’t involved.” Sherlock pulled his laptop out from under a stack of books and opened it. “I received an email this morning from someone who wished to remain anonymous. Three people in her network have been murdered since that Moriarty video was broadcast. We find out who killed these three and why, we’ll be that much closer to Moriarty or whoever was behind that video.”

John leaned over Sherlock and made a pretense of reading the email, but he was finding it hard to care about the details. Clients and cases and chasing after murderers were not what he came here for. He felt no thrill in the prospect of running headfirst into yet another adventure because this, standing alone in 221B with Sherlock Holmes, was the real danger. Even so, he was reluctant to change the subject. “So what makes you think this has anything to do with Moriarty?”

“The client,” Sherlock said. “One of the few people who had the privilege of direct contact with Moriarty.”

“But I thought the client was anonymous.”

Sherlock scoffed. “No one’s anonymous to _me_. And it’s clearly The Woman.”

“The Woman? What woman?”

“Irene Adler. It fits.” Sherlock turned sideways in his chair so he could gesture at John while explaining his reasoning. “The body of a woman she lived with, Kate, was found drowned in the tub of a London flat two weeks ago. Not long after, two of her famous clients turned up dead in much the same manner. It’s been all over the news, though no one’s made the connection. Someone’s trying to draw her out.”

John inhaled sharply and crossed his arms. “But that’s not possible.”

 “Why wouldn’t it be possible?”

“Because she’s…” John stopped himself when Sherlock turned to stare at him with inquisitive eyes. “I worried…Mycroft worried actually, that it might be best for you not to know this, but she wasn’t actually in any witness protection scheme. She was…”

“Killed by a terrorist cell in Karachi?” Sherlock asked nonchalantly.

John’s arms dropped to his sides. “So you _knew_ she was dead.”

Sherlock smirked and turned back to his laptop. “I knew she was _alive_. I stopped her being executed.”

John screwed his eyes shut and clenched his fists. “You what?”

“I saved her. It was easy enough. Just had to…”

“And you never thought to tell me,” John said. His voice was quiet but it was tense, and it didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to know that bragging wasn’t welcome just then. “You didn’t tell me she was alive for almost _four years_.”

Sherlock gently shut his laptop and turned around again, the bridge of his nose crinkled. “I didn’t see the need. Are you…upset that she’s alive?”

“Of course I’m not upset that she’s alive.”

Sherlock narrowed his eyes. “So you’re upset with me.”

“I’m not upset!” John shouted at the ceiling, startling them both. He lowered his voice and added, “I just think you’d trust me enough by now to tell me what’s going on.”

 “Why does it matter about Irene Adler? What’s it got to do with you?”

“Because you stood there, you listened to me tell you she was in a witness protection scheme, and you didn’t even—Christ, Sherlock, how many things _do_ you leave me in the dark about? For all I know, you spent those two years you were dead gallivanting around Eastern Europe with Irene _Bloody_ Adler while I was sat here…” John stopped himself there and pinched the bridge of his nose. He knew finishing that sentence would be dangerous, reveal too much. He was saying things he didn’t mean at that point, letting all the resentments he’d carefully buried under hastened forgiveness and stoicism bubble up to the surface. He hadn’t come to Baker Street to add to the list of things Sherlock had failed to tell him.

He wanted to smother Sherlock then, clutch him to his chest in a way that might be suffocating, might be tender. Instead, John forced himself to exhale. This was just a case. Irene was just a client. Sherlock was just a friend, maybe. Her fake deaths were small lies in the grand scheme of things. This was what John told himself to gain back some control, but it was too late. His eyes opened to Sherlock looking through him and he knew there was nothing he could hide. John became a cadaver at St. Bart’s, a particle of dust under the microscope, a thread on Sherlock’s crime wall, a curiosity to be examined and deconstructed and known completely and filed away. Then Sherlock turned away, put his elbows on the desk in front of him, and tucked his hands under his chin.

When Sherlock finally spoke, he left the emotion out of his voice, probably in an effort to keep things calm. This only set John more on edge. “You really think I’d leave London, leave everything I know to run around with Irene Adler for two years? That’s what you think of me?”

John looked down at his feet and opened his mouth to tell Sherlock he hadn’t meant it like that, but nothing came out.

“You want to know what I was doing while I was away? Look at me, John.”

John lifted his eyes and found himself looking at the glossy arrangement of curls on the back of Sherlock’s head. Then, without a word of warning, Sherlock stood up from the table, pushed his chair aside, shrugged his robe off, and started unbuttoning the black shirt underneath.

“Sherlock—Sherlock, what the hell are you doing?”

Sherlock didn’t answer, only let his shirt fall to the floor with the robe, his back still facing John.

“What do you see?” Sherlock asked.

“Sherlock…”

“Tell me what you see,” Sherlock insisted more firmly.

The network of scars that crossed Sherlock’s back had a sickening sheen, even in the dim light of the flat. Most were raised and branched over his shoulder blades, but there were also grooves of skin mid-back where something had cut into him. John stepped toward him as he harshly whispered, “Who did this to you?”

“Too many people to name or count,” Sherlock answered, still with his back to John. “As I’ve told you, I spent two years dismantling Moriarty’s network. That’s a lot of time to get captured, beaten, killed, found out. There was never any guarantee I’d survive or return to London.”

John drew in a shaky breath. “Sherlock…”

“I wasn’t with Irene Adler,” Sherlock continued. His still kept his voice monotone, but he was starting to speak louder, faster. “I wasn’t playing hide and seek and I wasn’t keeping you in the dark. I was in the dark myself. I didn’t know, not for certain, if I would ever be able to…” The words stopped when John’s palm made contact with Sherlock’s left shoulder blade and stayed there.

For a while, neither spoke or moved. There was nothing but the warmth and tension between John’s left hand and Sherlock’s skin, the rhythm of their slow deep breaths, the faint sound of sirens floating in from just outside the flat. They were both waiting for something to break the tension. That something never came.

When he couldn’t take the stillness anymore, John ran his hand over the length of Sherlock’s back, sometimes lingering to brush his thumb over raised scar tissue or thin gashes, feeling more with fingertips than palm as he got closer to the belt. When he reached Sherlock’s lower back, where the scars were scarce, he stopped himself, balled his hand into a fist, and gently pressed his knuckles to the flesh. “I should have known,” John said softly. He let his forehead fall into the space between Sherlock’s shoulder blades and forced a gust of air out of his lungs.

They stood like this for a small eternity, wanting to do more but aware that doing more would be reckless, life altering, dangerous, all the things they relished in cases but avoided in private.

“Do something,” Sherlock said, his voice barely more than a rumble in his chest.

 John rubbed his forehead against Sherlock’s back, moving it side to side. “ _You_ do something.”

Sherlock sighed, but stayed still otherwise. “For God’s sakes, John, we can’t both do nothing.”

John brushed his knuckles up the length of Sherlock’s spine. “I know.” He abruptly wheeled Sherlock around by the shoulders and gently pushed him down so that he was sitting on the desk, his hands gripping the edge, his legs on either side of John’s, his pupils blown so wide that his eyes seemed black.

John’s hands trailed lightly over Sherlock’s neck and sifted through the curls at the nape. “I know,” John said again. “Do you understand Sherlock? I know.” Sherlock nodded, clearly at a loss for words, and John was grateful to escape the plaintive look in his eyes when he leaned forward to kiss him.

He didn’t know what he imagined kissing Sherlock would be like. He’d never let himself imagine it, never let himself believe that Sherlock could even entertain the thought, let alone indulge it. But here he was tasting Sherlock’s bottom lip with the door wide open behind him and he could think of nothing else. He forgot about the underwhelming handshake at the tarmac and the unspoken words that brought him here, he forgot about Irene Adler, he forgot about his supposed home and the lying wife that lived there with him. He let his hands wander and pulled Sherlock against him by the waist. That was when Sherlock finally started kissing back, harshly and desperately, like it was something he wasn’t allowed to have.

John started to back away from the table, drawing Sherlock with him, until they reached the door. John pushed it shut and Sherlock backed him into it, drawing his knee up between John’s legs and tugging at the buttons of his cardigan. John grasped at the back of Sherlock’s thigh, encouraging him, but a series of beeps from the mobile in his back pocket made them both pause.

“Mary,” Sherlock said. His forehead was touching John’s, and  they shared a look of disappointment, apprehension.

“I don’t know a Mary,” John rasped. He closed his eyes and kissed Sherlock again. They stood panting against each other for a moment, then separated, brought back to a world in which there were things and people besides them. John’s phone beeped again and he resisted the urge to smash it against the door. He and Sherlock turned away from one another as they rearranged their hair and gathered their nerves.

 “I wish I didn’t know,” John said to the door. He wanted to bolt out of the flat, run away from this, but his leg had suddenly become cement.

“Hm?”

“I wish I didn’t know what you were about to say when you were standing on the tarmac,” John mumbled. He hoped Sherlock hadn’t heard and wouldn’t respond, but nothing was going according to plan today.

“What was I about to say?”

“You know what you were about to say.”

“Then one of us has to say it,” Sherlock pressed. They stayed standing with their backs to each other for a moment more before John regained control of his leg and moved to open the door.

“Not today,” John said as he shut the door to the flat, wishing he still believed in a Sherlock who could run off with Irene Adler while he grieved in London. The Sherlock he knew now, the one whose love for him was as obvious as the lashes on his back, was impossible to resist.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mary sent John a deluge of texts, enough for him to lose count of them on the cab ride home. He longed for a silent trip to clear his head, but the patter of a light drizzle and the accusatory beeping of his phone chased the quiet away. He checked the messages once, afraid that there was some complication with the pregnancy, but she had only started texting him to ask about dinner. The rest of the messages were all variations of where the hell are you.
> 
> He tried closing his eyes and shutting the world out altogether, but that put him back against the door of 221B with a desperate, panting Sherlock pressed against him. Part of him wanted to tell the cabbie to turn around and drop him back off at Baker Street, where he and Sherlock could finish what they’d started without a word to Mary.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to just-sort-of-happened(.tumblr.com) for beta reading this fic!

Mary sent John a deluge of texts, enough for him to lose count of them on the cab ride home. He longed for a silent trip to clear his head, but the patter of a light drizzle and the accusatory beeping of his phone chased the quiet away. He checked the messages once, afraid that there was some complication with the pregnancy, but she had only started texting him to ask about dinner. The rest of the messages were all variations of _where the hell are you_.

He tried closing his eyes and shutting the world out altogether, but that put him back against the door of 221B with a desperate, panting Sherlock pressed against him. Part of him wanted to tell the cabbie to turn around and drop him back off at Baker Street, where he and Sherlock could finish what they’d started without a word to Mary.

By the time John got home, the rain was falling in deafening sheets. He cursed as he got out of the cab and jogged to the door, too wet and freezing to care that the same Mary he’d been ignoring for the better part of an hour was somewhere on the other side.

When he got himself inside, he was surprised to find that Mary wasn’t fuming in the living room but stabbing at a half-eaten plate of Chinese takeaway at the kitchen table. She’d set a paper plate and plastic cutlery opposite her, which John took as an invitation to drape his wet coat on the back of the chair and sit. He reached for one of the takeaway boxes in the center of the table and dumped some fried rice onto his plate.

“Sorry,” John started. Mary raised her eyebrows at the word but kept her eyes on her food. “I didn’t know I was meant to do the shopping. Left my phone at the clinic. Had to run back and get it.”

“Why didn’t you text me to say that?” Mary asked without looking up.

“Oh, you texted me? Must have forgotten to take it off silent.”

Now she looked him in the eye. “Where were you really?”

“I just told you.”

“No you didn’t. I texted Sherlock to see where you were earlier and he said you were with him. So were you at the clinic, were you with Sherlock, or were you beating people up with tire levers to get your kicks again?”

“I was pistol-whipping a blackmailer, actually. You should try it. It’s good fun.”

Mary leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. “Why can’t you just tell me where you were? Why lie about it? What are you trying to hide?”

“Hmm. Well, I suppose I should know better than to lie to you seeing as you’re the expert at it.”

“Answer the question, John.”

“I was at Baker Street.”

“OK, so why’d you lie about it?”

“Because I’m not too keen on being interrogated about my every whereabout.”

“Well, you do have a habit of getting kidnapped. Maybe I’m reasonably concerned.”

“OK. All right. Here’s a question for you, since you’re so worried about where I’ve been and what I’ve done. Where were you five years ago, hmm? _Who_ were you?”

Mary cocked her head and gave John a smile that would have been sweet if someone honest were wearing it. “I don’t think you want to know.”

“Well, maybe we can each mind our own business then,” John snapped. This seemed to subdue Mary, and they managed to eat in silence for a full minute before she spoke again.

“You know, this doesn’t need to be an argument,” she said. “I have some idea of what’s going on and I’m not as angry as you think.” John ignored this and kept eating, the muscles of his jaw and temples straining as he chewed. “I know he loves you.”

John’s eyes shot up and caught Mary’s in a glare. She quirked her eyebrows and shrugged in response. “I’m not an idiot, John.”

John sniffed and turned his eyes back to his rice. “Don’t believe everything you read in the papers.”

“John. Look at me.” He refused. She continued in a cool, almost condescending tone. “I understand. Really, I do. Before I met you, before I was Mary Morstan, there were people I loved, people I cared about, people I had to leave behind. And it just eats you up inside to know that the people you love are out there and you can’t make contact because of your circumstances. I see that in you, I see that in Sherlock, and I get it. Really, I do.”

John threw the plastic fork down and smoothed his thumb and forefinger over his forehead. “Mary…”

“But I’m your _wife_ , John, your _wife_. And on top of that, I’m pregnant with your child. I hope Sherlock understands _that_.”

“Mary, we’re not…”

“You don’t go to Baker Street unless I’m there.”

“And what will happen if I do?” John asked. He could feel the muscles of his left hand seizing up. He clenched and unclenched it rapidly in a vain attempt to stop the spasm.

Mary’s eyes followed the movement of John’s hand. She smiled to herself, as if she were recalling a fond memory. “Just remember what happened the last time Sherlock inserted himself where he didn’t belong.”

John’s heart mimicked the spasm in his hand as his eyes met hers. The memory of finding Sherlock shot through the chest in Magnussen’s office was suddenly fresh in his mind. Without another word to Mary, he got up from the table, tossed his rice in the bin, and went to the guest room, where he’d been living as an exile in his own home for months.

As he dropped his wet clothes in a heap on the floor and got dressed for bed, his mind kept feeding him an image of what could happen if he ignored Mary’s warning. He saw Sherlock lying pale and blank-eyed on the carpet in Baker Street, head haloed by a pool of blood, a grim amalgam of his corpse outside of Barts and his dying body on Magnussen’s floor.

John lay awake all night, eyes screwed shut and Sherlock’s hypothetical death tacked to the forefront of his mind. He tried to calm himself by concentrating on the sound of rainfall or his own breathing, but some perverse part of him couldn’t stop staring danger and heartache in the face. By the time dawn broke and the first rays of sunlight streaked his bed, his mind was made up. He couldn’t risk going back to Baker Street. Not until Mary was dealt with. 


End file.
